One thing, we were taught in my math degree that knowing how to explain something many different ways reflected deep understanding. Knowing how to explain something once reflected some base understanding. Two different ways is much better. Three, and you’re starting to see some real understanding. Works for how to solve problems and various things, too. Vanilla repetition works, too, of course. Oral communication involves a lot of repetition in person and is sometimes missed.

I’d suggest YTers consider avoiding fluff and looking into “repetition”. Many videos are just poor at communicating. Some will talk so fast I have to play them at 1/2 speed. Things like that.

Might be time for some YTers to reconnect with the basics of communication and presenting information. It’s not solely graphics that matter.

Edit-key facts like names/places/times etc are prime examples. It kills me when people say someone’s name then forever after use pronouns. It’s easy to forget or just gloss over significance with vagaries.

There's people who listen to podcasts and spoken books at least at 1,5 speed (or even 2 or more). Its a preference for sure. For me it depends on the content, the language, even what I am (also) doing. Sometimes when I found a part very interesting or didn't understood it I tend to relisten that excerpt or episode.

With regards to your example on repetition this is spot on. The value of repetition is taught at schools. However I suppose you, ianai, are aware as well how e.g. people on phone (e.g. marketeers) mention your name to catch your attention.

> when I want information, I’m not interested in the fluff. Get to the point.

A few months ago I started using AssemblyAI to read YouTube videos (by running speech recognition on them) instead of watching them.

Then I realized, there were usually only a few pieces of useful information in the video. So I'd copy-paste the transcript into ChatGPT and ask it what they are.

For longer videos it doesn't fit, so I made a tool to turn them into bullet points in 2 phases (summarize each chunk, then take that and summarize it).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760598

Assembly charge $1/hour if you use the API (though their Playground is free) so I switched to just scraping the YouTube auto-captions. They're pretty bad but generally good enough input for a summary.

Genious move into outsource critical thinking, lol.

I use YouTube for entertainment and personalities. It puzzles me when people use YouTube for learning. I'm not saying that high-quality educational content doesn't exists on YouTube, but in my experience, it's rare to find a video that explains a concept better than a book or docs. Most videos tend to be padded with irrelevant information, which often leaves me feeling like I've wasted 15-20 minutes for minimal substance. However, once I started viewing YouTube as an entertainment platform rather than a learning resource, I stopped feeling frustrated about wasted time and began enjoying the content for what it is. For any real learning use books and other reference materials.

> It puzzles me when people use YouTube for learning. I'm not saying that high-quality educational content doesn't exists on YouTube, but in my experience, it's rare to find a video that explains a concept better than a book or docs.

Tell me you've never watched "DIY/home improvement/construction/car repair/any other repair YouTube" without telling me you've never watched "DIY/home improvement/construction/car repair/any other repair YouTube".

I shouldn't be snarky but the value of seeing someone fixing or making something on video far outweighs that gained by reading about it in a book or looking at static pictures. You can see more easily how everything fits together, how much force you have to put on a bolt to loosen it, or whatever. The information density of a well-made video on such a topic is far higher than you'd get from a book simply because you can see exactly what's happening.

I think your snark is understandable in this case. It’s a really solid life skill to be able to frame your own experience as not being the norm. It’s relatively easy to fall into the trap of thinking that how you use a tool is the only way folks should or do use it. Khan Academy is an easy example that shows YouTube can and has been used for education beyond entertainment.

> For any real learning use books and other reference materials.

Different people at different times and under different circumstances; and different teachers with different methods can all impact the best medium to engage with content or learn things.

I'm happy you've found what works for you. At the same time, I'll continue to consider YouTube a viable source of educational content when I find it the appropriate medium for such, which is often.

Honestly, the real loss to educational content has been the loss of dislike metrics, which can very effectively tell you if content is valuable or not in the education space. At least it's been partly replaced by a "users viewed here" histogram, which can be a true help.

> it's rare to find a video that explains a concept better than a book or docs.

Wow that’s not been my experience at all - with regard to anything science or math related, I’ve found YouTube a massive help over any other medium.

Software engineering, not as much with a few exceptions (algorithms, cryptography).

> leaves me feeling like I’ve wasted 15-20mins

This is how I feel about most books! I do hours of reading for something that could have been a few bullet points or a short video. Often finding the right book for your level is a challenge in itself

A book will probably explain a concept better than a YT video but the former will probably require many hours of reading and the latter just a couple minutes or an hour at most. Only "better" if time and effort aren't taken into account.

It depends. Imagine you want to learn how to tie your shoes for the first time in your life. Learning from a video would be much faster than from a textual guide.

Strong disagree. 3blue1brown has shed a new light and understanding on many mathematical concepts I already knew (and sometimes didn't) in ways that would have been impossible without video.

> But you have to admit there’s quite a bit of fluff in so many videos just to extend the time and try to keep eyeballs long enough to mention the sponsor or show ads.

Eh, none of the channels I follow do this. You the customer need to use pressure on creator, just unsubscribe to those fluff channels.

I don’t subscribe until someone has earned it. These fluff-filled videos are the top links from a Google/DDG search on a topic. It’s not as if the only ways to see these videos is to subscribe. When they can’t immediately begin answering the question I asked, the one they claim to answer it their video title, I move on.

The best feature (IMO, for me) would be one to blocklist these creators when that happens.

Ads are not the solution. I'm gladly paying for Nebula but in my opinion the quality of the videos in there is not great at all. Unless it's a discovery issue and I don't see the good ones.